


pink balloons, latex gloves.

by literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Dissociation, Gender Dysphoria, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Miscarriage, Multi, Post-Canon, Pregnancy, Surreal, Trans Male Character, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 08:04:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3439700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte/pseuds/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>something crawled in you and died and you carried it for nine months, it should have been a miscarriage, it should have stayed a stillborn.</i><br/>http://saltvwater.tumblr.com/post/110298219831/something-crawled-in-you-and-died-and-you-carried</p>
            </blockquote>





	pink balloons, latex gloves.

**Author's Note:**

> huge tw for themes of death, miscarriages, abortions, menstruation, vomit related to pregnancy. lots of heavy subject matter.

in the fledgling months of spring, when the air is soft and wet and the day is equal parts sun and rain, he's born with his umbilical cord wrapped around his throat and a heart too big for his infant body. the hospital room is deathly quiet as a nurse hurries him away from his mother and her pleading arms. under the blood, his face is purple and he doesn't scream, doesn't cry. doesn't breathe.

a crowd of doctors push his father into the corner. the camera's still rolling in his shaking hands, and he watches a bead of sweat roll down a doctor's forehead through the lens. his mother asks for her baby. begs. the nurse prepares herself to deliver the bad news.

heart defect. choked himself in the womb. stillborn.

but then his fingers twitch, and he starts crying.

the baby before jay was a miscarriage. his parents gave up trying for a child, and then they became pregnant with him. with what they thought was a her. he was their miracle daughter, their only child, their _get married to a nice man and take care of us when we're older_ child. after he makes it to the age of six, he doesn't gain a pound for three years. before he graduates high school, he discards the name they gave him at birth and chooses a simple meaningless one that won't stand out in the crowd. in old videos when he had his hair down to his waist, he pretends not to notice the static. the skips in the tape. the guest that wasn't invited.

the buzzing starts out small, quiet, barely noticeable. it follows him.

he grows up on pills. pills for his heart condition, pills for social anxiety, pills for the hives he gets frequently because he's allergic to almost everything. he is used to the rattling of medication in its ugly orange bottle, he understands weak bones and an oversized heart but he does not understand the rattling in his head. the loose screws. the missing gears. (tim grows up on pills, too. for talking to himself, for screaming to express his discomfort. for the imaginary friends, the shadow people, the guest that wasn't invited.)

he sneezes on his birthday cake and the candles go out in a rush of mucus and what might be blood. several birthdays later, several doctor appointments for his sick body but never his sick brain later, several entries later, he sneezes and the blood contrasts starkly against the clean hotel sink.

when he changed his legal name, jay kept his middle name because it belonged to the baby before him. she would have been happy with her healthy body. she would have been able to pick the pretty flowers that bloomed in the springtime without itching her skin until it was blotchy and peeling. she would have married a nice man and taken care of his parents when they grew old.

he loves two men he cannot marry without picking one or the other and he hasn't seen his parents since his first shot of testosterone. the house he lives in with brian and tim is painted baby blue, brown carpet and white plaster walls. their neighbors are average, suburban. gravel driveway, white picket fence, lawn gnomes on mowed grass. children selling lemonade on the sidewalk and dogs barking in the backyard.

the buzzing is the ambulance screaming down the street, and the fire truck racing after. brian's throat is dry and the laugh he drags out of his body puts up a resistance. he hasn't spoken a word in years. tim and jay watch it melt into the carpet, vacuumed just yesterday, and wait for the buzzing to stop cackling.

they get up at 6:45 every morning and pour themselves a bowl of cereal, or put some poptarts in the toaster, or heat last night's leftovers in the microwave. they kiss each other, with coffee breath and chapped lips. the light of dawn, pink and red, flecked with the pale eggshells of a newly hatched spring, smolders on the kitchen tile.

jay thinks he's going to throw up if he tries to eat.

brian signs to tim, “did you get any sleep last night?”

tim finishes tightening his tie and signs back, “you were there. you should know.”

after breakfast they shuffle out of the house and ride the bus to their respective jobs. they sold their cars to pay for the house. tim works at an office and brian might be a cashier? maybe? jay floats down the street and folds up in the cracks where tiny sprouts of grass grow and mother's backs are broken. he forgets he has a body until there's two holding him together.

he makes it to the nearest convenience store without having a breakdown but considers jumping in front of a car when he finally has it in his hands.

the buzzing is positive.

he shakes the stick and hopes with his heart in his mouth for the sign to change. it doesn't. the pink box, female, woman, maternal, burns a hole in the trash can and he quickly lifts the lid to toss the pregnancy test away. don't look at it. don't look at it. don't look.

the baby before him would have been thrilled, would have called her husband and parents to share the good news. he was born as bad news. he wonders spitefully why she won't stay in her grave, but he knows it's him who is keeping her ghost alive. (rigor mortis. jay can't pry the gun from alex's cold dead fingers. a bullet. a heavy pipe to the back of alex's skull. “we should get out of here. we need to get brian to a hospital.” tim should not have saved jay. his burden of a body is limp in tim's arms. pleading arms.)

brian and tim are home from work already. two quick kisses on the same cheek. “how was work?”

“called in sick,” jay gives them half of the truth.

“your birthday's coming up soon. you want us to do anything special, or do you wanna stay at home? whatever you want,” tim says out loud. he loves tim but he wishes he hadn't used his voice. every time he has to process a sound, the rumble of a car passing by, the neighbors talking outside on their phone, the click of the door when he locked himself in the bathroom, it takes away too much energy and he woke up with little to spare.

“i'm too tired. i'll think about it later,” is all jay can say.

night falls and the neighbor's dogs are howling. jay tries to skip dinner but tim knows when he's self destructing and makes him chicken noodle soup. the mattress sags under their combined weight and they turn off the light as tim peels off his binder. brian throws an arm around tim and rests his hand on his stomach, staying away from his chest, and jay thinks, brian would make a good dad.

it has to be brian's. tim and jay don't have the parts to do that. tim has been on t long enough that he doesn't have his period anymore, but they've stayed safe and used condoms every time. jay has been on birth control for two months, as long as they've lived together, and he assumed that was why he missed his period –

the voice is raspy and buzzes in the darkness. “timmy? timmy?”

jay knows the drill. he makes room for tim to roll over and grab the mask from under the bed.

the lips form a smile. “you didn't forget me, did you?” they coo, paternal. “oh, timmy, i knew you wouldn't forget me.”

brian used to wait for his to come calling, but the ski mask remains silent from where it's buried in the closet. he doesn't think about getting rid of it, or the boxes of tapes it's stuffed behind.

the next day passes away quietly, and jay calls in sick again. he feels the urge to throw up and opens the bathroom door to a steady buzzing. except it's so much louder, tugging his brain back and forth. the guest that wasn't invited stands in the way of the small square window above the toilet, and jay stares at the sunlight bending around and away from it. then he pukes.

he wakes up naked in the bathtub, holding his knees to his chest. no idea how much time has passed. the faucet is running and the boiling hot water is barely up to his ankles, but the mirror is fogged up with steam. he can hear brian and tim in the kitchen, and he realizes, suddenly, that brian is not the father.

(three months ago. his breath made clouds in the night air. he remembers that the sky was blue-black, and so cold and lonely, jay didn't feel threatened by the storm clouds. he didn't have his camera with him so he can't be sure if it happened or not, but the evidence is inside him.)

a dead man's baby.

“timmy?” angry whispering coming from the bedroom. “you almost forgot me. didn't you? timmy?”

jay moves in slow motion as he crawls out of the bathtub and makes his way naked to the bedroom. he turns on the light and blinks as the world comes into focus, bright, too bright.

the mask is attached to a body. they aren't looking at him. they're pulling at the umbilical cord around their throat and wheezing. their face is purple and they twitch on the bloody bedsheets, crying like a newborn. the bed is surrounded by pink balloons and he gags at the overwhelming smell of _clean,_ of sterilized needles and latex gloves.

the baby before him. the baby in him.

“i didn't forget you,” jay says.

“you don't deserve this life. you should have been aborted, you sick freak,” they hiss. “help me, help me, i can't breathe, i deserve this life –”

the buzzing intensifies until the walls shake. blood trickles down his leg and his ears ring, pink, blue, pink, blue. he doesn't scream, doesn't cry.

doesn't breathe.


End file.
